He Huang has a way with nationality-deprecating humour that bites. When she first broke through on Australia’s Got Talent in 2022, she archly apologised for Covid before pointing out it wasn’t her fault. She spent the entire time locked down in Australia. When one douche shouted at her to go home to China, she replied to his racist retort, “But sir, there are no flights.”
An instant hit, her three-minute taster that included a bit about Huang being a “leftover lady,” unmarried and not dating while in her 30s, led to her debut stand-up show Bad Bitch. It scored a nomination for Best Newcomer at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival and won the same category at the Sydney Comedy Festival.
Huang starts her sophomore outing in the same vein, deadpan asking the assembled audience in the Chinese Museum’s Silk Room if she can record the set on her phone, only to drop, a wicked beat later, “for the Chinese government.”
Apparently her schtick caused quite a ruckus back home, and not just with the bureaucrats who constantly monitor Chinese social media app Weibo. Her mother, back home in a remote and still very pro-Mao community, tells everyone that her daughter essentially lies on stage for money. Still, the gig has seen Huang graduate from the “leftovers” table at family events to her uncles’ perch, where she is expected to sink shots and gamble with aplomb.
Always teetering gleefully on the edge of bad taste, Huang’s personal revelations are incredibly sex positive and she’s fond of lobbing C-Bombs too, so prudes need not attend. A sharp wit with a deceptively laid-back style that’s as dry as the desert, her crowd work is top-notch, including when she asks one gay man sitting in the front row (not me) how much he’d charge for an hour’s sex work. When he inexplicably tells her she could command $100 less than him, Huang not only takes this foolhardy heckle on the chin, but also merrily uses it against him, rightfully so (he loves it, too).
This friendly fire is also turned on herself, with an extended bit that giggles at a local girlfriend’s unadulterated horror on seeing Huang suck the toes of her favourite dim sum order, chicken feet. This leads to a sudden realisation that it’s all relative, when presented with a box of fried rats while working for an NGO in Kenya.
Huang’s travels make up a fair chunk of this show, including the same Australian friend convincing her to go backpacking in her thirties as a delayed rite of passage. Only making it as far as Bangkok, she’s confronted with the inherent noisiness of hostel dorm rooms, not to mention the hefty price of hooking up in one: 85 baht, compared to only five for the bunk bed. Then there’s the guided tour of North Korea and the suspiciously spy-like men in the bar of the only hotel available to outsiders, a trip which in retrospect, she muses, probably funded Kim Jong Un’s wine and cheese habit.
Offering a genuinely fresh perspective, Huang deserves all the awkward overseas trips, wine, cheese and dips this outrageous fun set earns her.
Huang is performing at the Chinese Museum from March 28 until April 21 and tickets are available here.
